MRG
Newbie
- Joined
- Mar 24, 2007
- Messages
- 1,174
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Greetings all,
6 years ago in 2001, an amazing FPS was released. That game was Ghost Recon. Since then, there has been several expansion packs released, each bringing even more intense tactical action for the gamer to enjoy. When Ghost Recon was released, it was the first game that I played on my then new Radeon 7500. I remember being amazed at how great the graphics and audio was, to the point that I made several in-game fan movies.
Fast forward 5 years & nother great game in the Ghost Recon series is released. This time, the game is called Ghost Recon:Advanced Warfighter. Like the original Ghost Recon before it, GRAW, as it's commonly known as, brings non-stop intense modern day FPS action. From the moment you first jump out the back of the C130, free falling several thousand feet before pulling your chute over a huge city, to desperatly trying to avoid instant death from incomming tank rounds to the climatic ending, you are going to be in one hectic & chaotic firefight after another.
Visuals
Graphics wise, the game does not disappoint, even though the game itself is close to a year old now. I found that on mid-to-low-range hardware such as can be found in my own PC, the games engine scales nicely so that I was able to crank up the visuals, while not taking that much of a performance hit. For those with video cards that have 256MB of RAM or less, you'll find that the game limits the texture setting in-game, to "Medium." This feature has caused some grief among gamers who don't like being restricted to what changes they can make ingame. However, you can edit a file in the games directory to override that setting. For those with video cards that have 512MB of RAM, you can change the setting to "High" ingame & so thus don't need to edit the file. IMO, with the game maxed out to the highest your monitor will allow, the game truely does look great. I was particularly impressed with how the explosions looked, such as when you fired a HE round from the grenade launcher to those that you throw. Very pleasing to the eye. While buildings themselves are not destructable, they do tend to look the worse for ware, after a few hundred stray rounds from different caliber shells pepper their surfaces.
Audio
As far as audio is concerned, it's very well done IMO. The ambience on every map is spot on, which adds a huge amout to the immersion factor of the game. From hearing vehicles driving around to enemy soldiers talking to dogs barking and even the sounds of distant gun fire is nicely done. I was very pleasantly suprised the first time I opened up full auto in the middle of a city, only to then hear my gunshots echoing off the differnt buildings. Its small details like that, which really help immerse the gamer into the world onscreen. Quite often the audio is realtime too, not scripted & so if you hear gunshot off to your right, and then head over that way, you'll often come across the cause. The voice acting of your squad mates sounds realistic, with inflections in their voices depending on their situation. the comments they say are somewhat limited in variety, but then again, this is war & not really the best time to be chatting away swapping recipes.
Gameplay
The gameplay itself is solid & on a whole, a lot of fun. Not knowing if an enemy is going to be around the next corner is enough to keep you on the edge of your seat. Not to mention the ability to, to a degree, alter your surroundings. Shoot the tire on an abondoned vehicle & it'll list to that side. Shoot the windows out of vehicles, while using them as cover to give yourself a clear line of fire. Shoot too many rounds into a vehicle & parts will blow off. Go a little too anal and you'll soon cause the car to explode. The first time I took cover behind a car, just seconds before an enemies bullets smacked into it's side, which then caused the cars alarm to go off, it made me cracked up. Of course I died 2 seconds later, but at least I died laughing. I discovered the ability to shoot through some objects the hard way. I saw a group of 3 enemy soldiers walk behind a wooden fence. so I snuck up to it's other side and waited to pick them off one by one as they walked out. Well I "assumed" that they couldn't/wouldn't be able to see between the slats of the fence. Well they did and opened fire on me from the other side, blowing the fence apart in the process. Now I make it a rule to put a clip into every fence I come across, just for good measure. As you progress through the game, you'll get the ability to have a UAV or "Unmanned Aerial Vehicle" This great addition to your team allows you to check out what is ahead of you. At any time you can give it a series of waypoints and it'll fly that path. At which time you can activate the UAV's cam to view the area ahead. Very helpful, but not overly so, because the AI does not always stay put. Keep that in mind when/if you use it. The same cam view can be activate on any of your squadmates with a press of a button. So you'll see what they see.
Artificial Intelligence
I have come to the conclusion that i'm not impressed with the AI of my squadmates. At times they can be a big help, killing everything in sight with deadly accuracy, while at other times, they just gets in the way. More times than not, they won't respond to my commands with any kind of intelligence. I'll tell them to "Go over there" and they will, but then stand in the open and exchange pot shots with the enemy. 1 in 5 times will they take any kind of cover. Then it's the times I call them to me, and one of my moronic squad mates will decide that he just has to stand in the spot I currently am standing in and so proceeds to push me out of my cover and into the open. Bang! I'm dead. At times I have simply placed a few bullets into each of their heads and proceeded through the map without them. so far, I have not come across any penality for such actions. On other maps they are good to use as cannon fodder. If i'm really lucky, they might take out 1 or 2 before they biff it. However, all is not lost. The enemy AI is IMO, very well done and quite lethal. You'll catch them yelling to their friends if they spot you, with the universal "Come-over-here-quick-men!, I-see-them! There-they-are!" pointing gesture, just moments before they take cover and then proceed to kill you as fast as possible. I'm sad to admit that they have flanked me more than once, and so far killing me instantly almost every time.
When you do manage to hit an enemy and knock him off his feet, if it's not a lethal hit, such as to the head or heart, you'll see the enemy slowly pick himself up off the ground, pull out his weapon and proceed to REALLY try to kill you, all the while as he is taking cover once again. They arn't afraid to dive behind cover or crawl on the ground. what I noticed most, was that when they did such actions, it was during an approiate time, such as
when an enemy will break from cover and then sprint across the open ground and then dive behind cover as i'm spraying bullets and hitting everything BUT him. On some missions the enemy will be armed with RPG's. They arn't afraid to use them against you AND the RPG has splash damage, so you better pay close attention otherwise it's lights out.
I have read as well as heard, that this game was very buggy & prone to crashes & lockups for no reason when it was first released which turned a large number of people off of it. However, several patches, 7 in fact, have been released, with the newest one bringing the game up to version 1.35. The newest patch has all previous fixes (and there are alot of them) and weighs in at just under 275MB. So far, I have not had the game freeze, crash or act up in any way. So in other words, Stable. Apart from fixing and adding alot, the 1.35 patch introduced "Hardcore" difficulty to the SP campaign and is available as soon as you install the patch, though you need to start a new game for it to take effect. At least thats what it seemed like when I tested. As far as I am concerned, the "Hardcore" setting is just that. HARDCORE!
I very much enjoy the game & am looking forward to my continual onslaught against those that would dare raise a virtual weapon against me or my own. Pity be the fool!
Final Score 4/5
Official Website & Gallery
http://www.ghostrecon.com/us/ghostrecon3/index.php
http://www.ghostrecon.com/us/ghostrecon3/seemore_pc.php
-MRG
6 years ago in 2001, an amazing FPS was released. That game was Ghost Recon. Since then, there has been several expansion packs released, each bringing even more intense tactical action for the gamer to enjoy. When Ghost Recon was released, it was the first game that I played on my then new Radeon 7500. I remember being amazed at how great the graphics and audio was, to the point that I made several in-game fan movies.
Fast forward 5 years & nother great game in the Ghost Recon series is released. This time, the game is called Ghost Recon:Advanced Warfighter. Like the original Ghost Recon before it, GRAW, as it's commonly known as, brings non-stop intense modern day FPS action. From the moment you first jump out the back of the C130, free falling several thousand feet before pulling your chute over a huge city, to desperatly trying to avoid instant death from incomming tank rounds to the climatic ending, you are going to be in one hectic & chaotic firefight after another.
Visuals
Graphics wise, the game does not disappoint, even though the game itself is close to a year old now. I found that on mid-to-low-range hardware such as can be found in my own PC, the games engine scales nicely so that I was able to crank up the visuals, while not taking that much of a performance hit. For those with video cards that have 256MB of RAM or less, you'll find that the game limits the texture setting in-game, to "Medium." This feature has caused some grief among gamers who don't like being restricted to what changes they can make ingame. However, you can edit a file in the games directory to override that setting. For those with video cards that have 512MB of RAM, you can change the setting to "High" ingame & so thus don't need to edit the file. IMO, with the game maxed out to the highest your monitor will allow, the game truely does look great. I was particularly impressed with how the explosions looked, such as when you fired a HE round from the grenade launcher to those that you throw. Very pleasing to the eye. While buildings themselves are not destructable, they do tend to look the worse for ware, after a few hundred stray rounds from different caliber shells pepper their surfaces.
Audio
As far as audio is concerned, it's very well done IMO. The ambience on every map is spot on, which adds a huge amout to the immersion factor of the game. From hearing vehicles driving around to enemy soldiers talking to dogs barking and even the sounds of distant gun fire is nicely done. I was very pleasantly suprised the first time I opened up full auto in the middle of a city, only to then hear my gunshots echoing off the differnt buildings. Its small details like that, which really help immerse the gamer into the world onscreen. Quite often the audio is realtime too, not scripted & so if you hear gunshot off to your right, and then head over that way, you'll often come across the cause. The voice acting of your squad mates sounds realistic, with inflections in their voices depending on their situation. the comments they say are somewhat limited in variety, but then again, this is war & not really the best time to be chatting away swapping recipes.
Gameplay
The gameplay itself is solid & on a whole, a lot of fun. Not knowing if an enemy is going to be around the next corner is enough to keep you on the edge of your seat. Not to mention the ability to, to a degree, alter your surroundings. Shoot the tire on an abondoned vehicle & it'll list to that side. Shoot the windows out of vehicles, while using them as cover to give yourself a clear line of fire. Shoot too many rounds into a vehicle & parts will blow off. Go a little too anal and you'll soon cause the car to explode. The first time I took cover behind a car, just seconds before an enemies bullets smacked into it's side, which then caused the cars alarm to go off, it made me cracked up. Of course I died 2 seconds later, but at least I died laughing. I discovered the ability to shoot through some objects the hard way. I saw a group of 3 enemy soldiers walk behind a wooden fence. so I snuck up to it's other side and waited to pick them off one by one as they walked out. Well I "assumed" that they couldn't/wouldn't be able to see between the slats of the fence. Well they did and opened fire on me from the other side, blowing the fence apart in the process. Now I make it a rule to put a clip into every fence I come across, just for good measure. As you progress through the game, you'll get the ability to have a UAV or "Unmanned Aerial Vehicle" This great addition to your team allows you to check out what is ahead of you. At any time you can give it a series of waypoints and it'll fly that path. At which time you can activate the UAV's cam to view the area ahead. Very helpful, but not overly so, because the AI does not always stay put. Keep that in mind when/if you use it. The same cam view can be activate on any of your squadmates with a press of a button. So you'll see what they see.
Artificial Intelligence
I have come to the conclusion that i'm not impressed with the AI of my squadmates. At times they can be a big help, killing everything in sight with deadly accuracy, while at other times, they just gets in the way. More times than not, they won't respond to my commands with any kind of intelligence. I'll tell them to "Go over there" and they will, but then stand in the open and exchange pot shots with the enemy. 1 in 5 times will they take any kind of cover. Then it's the times I call them to me, and one of my moronic squad mates will decide that he just has to stand in the spot I currently am standing in and so proceeds to push me out of my cover and into the open. Bang! I'm dead. At times I have simply placed a few bullets into each of their heads and proceeded through the map without them. so far, I have not come across any penality for such actions. On other maps they are good to use as cannon fodder. If i'm really lucky, they might take out 1 or 2 before they biff it. However, all is not lost. The enemy AI is IMO, very well done and quite lethal. You'll catch them yelling to their friends if they spot you, with the universal "Come-over-here-quick-men!, I-see-them! There-they-are!" pointing gesture, just moments before they take cover and then proceed to kill you as fast as possible. I'm sad to admit that they have flanked me more than once, and so far killing me instantly almost every time.
When you do manage to hit an enemy and knock him off his feet, if it's not a lethal hit, such as to the head or heart, you'll see the enemy slowly pick himself up off the ground, pull out his weapon and proceed to REALLY try to kill you, all the while as he is taking cover once again. They arn't afraid to dive behind cover or crawl on the ground. what I noticed most, was that when they did such actions, it was during an approiate time, such as
when an enemy will break from cover and then sprint across the open ground and then dive behind cover as i'm spraying bullets and hitting everything BUT him. On some missions the enemy will be armed with RPG's. They arn't afraid to use them against you AND the RPG has splash damage, so you better pay close attention otherwise it's lights out.
I have read as well as heard, that this game was very buggy & prone to crashes & lockups for no reason when it was first released which turned a large number of people off of it. However, several patches, 7 in fact, have been released, with the newest one bringing the game up to version 1.35. The newest patch has all previous fixes (and there are alot of them) and weighs in at just under 275MB. So far, I have not had the game freeze, crash or act up in any way. So in other words, Stable. Apart from fixing and adding alot, the 1.35 patch introduced "Hardcore" difficulty to the SP campaign and is available as soon as you install the patch, though you need to start a new game for it to take effect. At least thats what it seemed like when I tested. As far as I am concerned, the "Hardcore" setting is just that. HARDCORE!
I very much enjoy the game & am looking forward to my continual onslaught against those that would dare raise a virtual weapon against me or my own. Pity be the fool!
Final Score 4/5
Official Website & Gallery
http://www.ghostrecon.com/us/ghostrecon3/index.php
http://www.ghostrecon.com/us/ghostrecon3/seemore_pc.php
-MRG
